My previous readers are aware that I recently purchased the eBook from www.33daystoonlineprofits.com. I have been real excited about getting my first mini-site/sales letter thing up and today is the day.

You can check out my first site built with influence from this book at www.inventric.com/products/nod32.

I'm still jazzed about the book :) . And I will stay that way unless I realize I can't make any cash money. There are a few things though that I noticed Yanik Silver and Jim Edwards introduce in their book that really could use some more explanation. I'll cover them as I come across them, here in my blog.

The first major point is with autoresponders. I checked out their recommendation on an autoresponder tool: www.aweber.com. So it definitely seems a little pricey at $19.95 a month. However, my first impression of it is "Wow".

I definitely wanted one tool that could do both email campaigns and autoresponders and I think this is it. I have used Got's Campaigner and ConstantContact.com. And those are good tools too that seemed affordable for the industry they are in. But they don't do autoresponding at all or well. And I don't particularly care for how they gather emails for new users. ConstantContact has a two form process: takes a user's email on the first page, and then sends them over to another form for more details.

Aweber has just one form. Get a first name and an email. Easy to embed in your mini-site. I like that. Ahh, but there was the first hold up, that Yanik could have said a few more words on. But at least I was able to look at his own website like www.instantsalesletters.com

If you sign up for his mini-course, you'll see that there is a form to enter in the first name and email address. When you submit, you see a thank you "page" appear inside his sales letter. The user isn't confusing redirected away from the exciting sales letters. Great, so how do I do that!? I had to look at his JavaScript code.

I saw that he uses the SSI IFrame script from dynamicdrive.com. Awesome! For anyone using iframes, you need this. It dynamically resizes the iframe based on the size of the page that it frames.

So in this case, after the user submits their name/email, the frame gets smaller to enclose around the smaller "thank you" page. Keeps your letter very nicely formed and still allowing you to use iframes. Check out the source behind my mini-site if you need. But the instructions at dynamicdrive.com were pretty self-explanatory.

To get some recent visitors up to speed, the company I currently work for, Digital River, has allowed me to join a program of theirs. They basically setup a software store for me, and my job is to try and market these products. My store is at www.safelykept.com by the way.

So this catalog of products is right through them. There really are quite a few good products from Symantec, Acronis, Microsoft, etc. But there are also some real funny ones. Funny because well... you can see for yourself here.

Well, I just found another one:

Bikini Factory

I swear one day, I'm going to get a tap on the back from my boss as he's been watching over me. I'll be looking at software like Bikini Factory. "Sir, I can explain."

And for some reason if you fall in love with Bikini Factory 1, there is also a Bikini Factory 2. :)

So I'm trying to figure out how to make a living selling something on the internet. I play with selling anything from my own software that I write, to affiliate selling of hosting, web templates, or other people's software.

To see how other people do it, I found an eBook that came very recommended. www.33daystoonlineprofits.com It's written by 2 guys who have made a lot of money on the Internet: Yanik Silver and Jim Edwards.

At first I was very skeptical. The page selling this eBook is one of those "sales letters". Aren't these for get rich quick schemes? Where all they do is teach you is to sell their own book? I even decided against buying, but then a month or so later, I decided to give it a try. I mean, they offer a 60 day refund policy if you don't like it, and I don't hear anyone complaining about Yanik on the internet.

It was well worth the $29. There is a ton of information in here introducing anyone to marketing on the internet, whether your selling cars, t-shirts, or information products (like Yanik). 33Days definitely advertises some of his other products here, so you might get wrapped up in buying some more stuff if you get interested. But it has really taught me some things about how to sell.

I can't claim any successes yet, as I am still crafting my mini sites using the "sales letter" approach. And, yes, maybe I'll sing another tune about the book. But I'm pretty sure I've learned some valuable things about persuading people.

And Jim Edwards seems like a stand up guy too. I was a little worried that since I bought the 2004 edition of 33Days about 7 days ago, and then they just release a 2005 edition, that I'd have to pay for an upgrade, or do a refund and then buy the new release. But they upgraded everyone, who bought the 2004 edition in the last 60 days, to the 2005 edition for free. That was a very nice thing to do.

Keep you fingers crossed. I'd really like to make a living selling some useful products on the internet.

No way! It was like minutes after I posted my displeasure with Overture and my pending ads, that all of a sudden they've all been approved. So those guys like my blog? Interesting, according to my webstats tool, I have had like nobody reading this blog. I guess I need a new web stats tool. :)

Since the power of my will seems to be magnified by Blogger: "Reader's you should purchase hosting, website templates, or softare from my site." Now I'll take a nap as the money rolls in.

I spell checked my last post. The spell checker tried to correct my spelling of Google, Adwords, and Blogger! Yet Overture went through. Is this a half hearted deterrent from using Google owned Trademarked terms in my posts, or just no one's bothering to update Blogger? I realize Blogger is like the forgotten stepchild these days.

Does anyone know if Google indexes blogs at TypePad higher in priority than Blogger ones?

I just spell checked this post, and it didn't like the word "blogs". Am I still asleep?

This really is just a rant, because these PPC programs are driving me over the edge. I have still yet to figure out how to make a profit from these things. But the systems really are trying to see how much hair I can pull out of my head before I just hand them my wallet.

First, I get this Ad disapproved notice from Google today. Apparently I can't mention "Mac" in my ad. So if I sell software for the Mac or PC, I guess I can only mention the PC! Anyone else have something else to use for the Mac. Here are some ad alternatives I guess I have to consider. It's for Poser 5 from Curious Labs by the way.

"For the PC or the OS that rhymes with crack. Thanks AdWords!" - My current running ad. I wanted to say Google instead of Adwords, but that got flagged too.

"For the PC or Steve Job's operating system."

Got any other ideas? Jesus.

And since this post is on Blogger, I am sure some Google people are about to make life really hard for me right now. They probably just put my domains on some kind of torture list where they automates their cruel psychological mind games on me.

Now for Overture! I don't even understand the interface there to create Ads. I have this problem. Ads are supposed to be approved in a day or 2. Well after like a week, I got all sorts of ads declined, because there was a space in the URL. Dammit. Couldn't they have validated the URL automatically as I submitted it!? Now my fixed submissions have been in the Pending queue for over a week. At least new ads on Google are posted immediately.

You companies. Careful, I might just figure I need to build another Search engine. I was hoping Kanoodle might be a choice, but I hear their ad conversion is terrible. Maybe that will change soon.

I started another blog at safelykept.blogspot.com or www.inventric.com/safelykeptblog. It's a commercial type blog that highlites news about products that we feature in the store. I also post information about our best selling and most popular products.

It's bit of an experiment to see if people find a blog that sells software can be useful. This way though, people can leave comments about the news or products, and get some honest feedback about them.

I love website templates because they make it so easy for me to create a beautiful website. I have no graphic design training, so I need this. Here is an interview with David Braun, who created the best set of cheap webiste templates on the internet. We are an affiliate of Templatemonster at www.nicewebsite.biz.

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